Race

last updated 6 May 2017

Races exist, races are different and race matters.
Although this review article presents no new research, because political correctness runs through the social sciences like a cancer, such a frank overview of the literature is novel in itself.
The article covers racism, taxonomies of race, altruism, creativity, crime, environment, honesty, impulsivity, intelligence, music, overconfidence, personality and culture, populations, science, sex, slavery and sport.

Introduction

Objectively, a visitor to earth would deduce that our planet is dominated by one species, Homo sapiens. Cluster analysis--or common sense--would reveal that members of said species may be further classified across two dimensions: according to sex, and according to race. Race is an important aspect of our species, not merely a detail.
In the name of political correctness, a number of American anthropologists claim that race does not exist. They are wrong. Races exist (Entine 2001; Goodrum 2002; Sarich and Miele 2004; Stowe 2006), and race matters (Levin 2005). Every human being is equipped with the same psychology: they perceive their own community, nation or race as an ‘in-group’, whereas those outside belong to an ‘out-group’ (Tajfel 1981, 1982; Tajfel and Turner 1986). See also Salter (2006). The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the US non-profit public broadcasting television service, have an online companion to their 2003 documentary Race: The Power of an Illusion which lists 10 ‘facts’ about race. It turns out that all ten of these ‘facts’ are untrue (Sarich and Miele 2004). Denying (i.e. lying about) race differences is harmful because it implies that any differences between the groups must be man-made, so someone is to blame. Although evolution doesn't do equality, when it comes to species and sub-species, it doesn't do hierarchy either. So talk of a ‘superior race’ is meaningless (as can be seen below, each race excels in different areas). Are we even a superior species? The most successful animal, in terms of biomass, is the Antarctic krill. However, different races do not necessarily create environments that are equally preferred by human beings in general, and trends in the direction of migration evidence this. Ironically, the better educated people are, the less of a grasp on the reality of racial differences they have (The Realist 2007).

Racism

So-called racism is a perfectly natural in-group bias which has been stigmatized by the politically correct West. In order to boost tax revenue and keep inflation down, Western governments have allowed mass immigration. To mitigate their self-serving actions, they needed to encourage cooperation by enforcing egalitarianism.

Historical Taxonomies of Race

The categorization of species, sub-species and thus races is not an exact science. Indeed, some of the genetic differences between Africans and Eurasians are more than half as great as between the consensus human genome and chimpanzees; and modern Eurasians and sub-Saharan Africans are about as genetically distant as modern humans are from Homo erectus (Curnoe and Thorne 2003).

A note about Jews
The mechanism by which people become Jews is inherited ethnicity, which makes them genetically cohesive. It is best to think of Jews as a tribe and Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy. See MacDonald (2002).

Baker (1974)
A closely similar seven-race taxonomy to the one above, comprising the five major races of Blumenbach and the Khoi Bushmen, consisting of the Hottentots and Bushmen of southwest Africa and the Kalahari desert, and the Australids, consisting of the Australian Aborigines and Melanesians.

Evolution of Races

Population groups may evolve and diverge though time and space.
Sometimes a reproducing group may disperse over a large area such that gene flow is restricted by geographic distance. This will likely result in clinal variation of the genotype.
Or the population could split into two though dispersal, or by geographical changes such as mountain or island formation.
A significant distance, or a physical geographic barrier, will prevent any gene flow between the populations.
In which case each population will independently be subject to a) genetic drift, and likely b) different selective pressures.
This will result in discontinuous variation of the genotype across the populations resulting in different clades.
This can lead to different subspecies, the individuals in each population group are in theory capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring, but do not.
Over enough time, the subspecies may evolve and diverge to such an extent that, even if the physical barriers were removed, the two populations are incapable of reproducing fertile offspring, in which case they would be known as different species. Note that a subspecies is a potential new species. Such divergent evolution, the diffusion and splitting of a species and formation of new species, is known as cladogenesis.
Alternatively, a new species can evolve, over enough time, though a single lineage. The ancestoral species become extinct, so that only a single species exists at any point in time. This is known as anagenesis, the species are known as chronospecies and the extinct species are known as paleospecies (extinct subspecies are known as paleosubspecies).
Humans are the result of both cladogenesis and anagenesis.
The species Homo heidelbergensis lived in Africa, Europe and western Asia between 600 and 200 thousand years ago and, via divergent evolution, evolved into Neanderthals, Denisovans and the paleosubspecies Homo sapiens idaltu that lived almost 160,000 years ago in Pleistocene Africa, which, about 200,000 years ago, evolved into the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans. It is likely that modern humans introgressed with both Neanderthals and Denisovans.
Modern human populations continued to evolve further by a continuous splitting process as they expanded their territories around the world, giving rise to different races.
A race is a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species, i.e. an extended family that inbreeds to some extent.
Races can even be identified without any knowledge of ancestry.
We are interested in the biological construct, so it makes sense to focus on the genotype (the phenotype is a product of the genotype and the environment).
A race, then, is a sub-population of modern humans that are more similar in some genetic sense to each other than to those in other sub-population of modern humans.
Note also that the language of genetics is statistics. Genetic differences between populations are statistical.
The task of identifying races is one of cluster analysis.
The continents, and their geography—oceans, the Himalayas, and the Sahara—led to small discontinuous jumps in genetic distance resulting in different clades (Rosenberg et al. 2005).
Whilst more continuous areas such as central Asia led to clinal variation of the genotype (Rosenberg et al. 2005).
In addition to geography, human population clusters may be maintained by socio-cultural factors, specifically endogamy, the practice of marrying within a specific ethnic group, class or social group.
Over time five races developed, in Africa, Eurasia, Oceania, East Asia and America (Nei and Roychoudhury (1993), Bowcock et al. 1994, Zhivotovsky, Rosenberg and Feldman 2003, Rosenberg et al. 2005, Bastos-Rodrigues, Pimenta and Pena 2006).
Oceania includes Australia, Melanesia and New Guinea, and America includes Eskimos. Note that the historical classifications of race are similar to the five races determined by genetic analysis.

Altruism

Europeans appear to suffer from promiscuous altruism, showing the greatest concern for both other races and the environment. It is nearly 25 years since Bob Geldof's famous Feed The World campaign, and in that time Ethiopia's population has over doubled, growing from 33.5 million to 78 million today (Myers 2008).

Creativity

Whites are the most creative race.
For cultural, social and institutional reasons, East Asians, despite having higher intelligence than Europeans, have a ‘creativity problem’ (Kanazawa 2006).

Crime

Blacks are 3.3 times more likely than whites to commit single-offender crimes of violence and 8.0 times more likely to commit multiple-offender crimes of violence in the US (U.S. Department of Justice 2006). Similarly, blacks are 3.4 times more likely than whites to be arrested for a notifiable offence in England and Wales (Home Office 2006).
Globally, Rushton (2000) found that African and Caribbean countries reported twice the amount of violent crime (rape, murder, and serious assault) as did European countries, and about three times as much as did countries from the Pacific Rim. The most likely reason for the high incidence of black crime is blacks’ lower intelligence and greater impulsivity, which themselves are probably biological in origin (Levin 2005, p. 317; Lynn 2007).
Rushton and Whitney (2002) found that while wealth was negatively related to crime across European or East Asian countries, it was positively related to crime for the African and Black Caribbean countries (i.e., the wealthier an African or Black Caribbean country, the greater its rate of violent crime).

Environment

Claims that the environment is to blame for differences between the races is politically-inspired obfuscation. People create their own environments, so the only non-circular explanation for differences is ultimately genetic. The genetic differences themselves are ultimatly due to the past environment over the long term (because evolution is a slow process). Rushton (1989)'s race evolution hypothesis which uses r/K selection theory (MacArthur and Wilson 1967) offers the best explanation.

Honesty

All but two African countries scored in the more corrupt half of the scale in the 2007 World Map Index of perception of corruption.
Kinsella (2007) describes how 100 wallets were deliberately lost to test honesty. 79% of white people were honest and returned the wallets and 57% of black people were honest and returned the wallets.

Intelligence

Europeans developed advanced mathematics (Newton and Leibniz), complex societies and set foot on the moon 40 years ago, whilst Africans never developed mathematics (beyond simple arithmetic), never developed a written language, never developed a calendar and never even invented the wheel. Taggart details many black invention myths.
IQ measures the ability of an individual to perform a novel cognitive task (see Carroll (1993, p. 16)).
Modern IQ tests are designed to avoid cultural biases, and the evidence suggests that they are successful. Firstly, IQ differences show up before the age of 4, and secondly, different races tend to find the same questions easy, and the same questions difficult (see Herrnstein and Murray (1994, p. 280–286, 649–661), Jensen (1998, p. 360–369), Levin (2005, p. 62–73)).
Unlike a European, an African with an IQ of 67 does not appear retarded, suggesting that a lower IQ among Africans is quite natural.
Genetic factors explain 50–90% of the difference between the mean IQ scores of Europeans and Africans (Jensen 1998; Rushton and Jensen 2005; Lynn 2006; Hart 2007), whilst the remainder is explained by the environment (which is ultimately the product of the genes of the population). The East Asian/European difference is probably largely genetically determined. For the sake of comparison, the last four entries in the table below include other primates and extinct species of the genus Homo.

Music

Africans and Native Americans perform less well than Europeans on tests of musical abilities of pitch discrimination, tone discrimination, and memory, but they perform about the same as or slightly better than Europeans on tests of rhythm.
Source: Lynn (2006)

Personality and Culture

Whites tend to score higher on extraversion. Asians are low on extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness. Whilst blacks score high on agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness. See Appendix B in Gosling, Rentfrow and Swann (2003).
Lynn and Martin (1995) found Nigeria (but not Uganda) high in extraversion and low in neuroticism, whilst China was low in extraversion.
Allik and McCrae (2004) showed a clear contrast of European and American cultures with Asian and African cultures; the former were higher in extraversion and openness to experience and lower in agreeableness.
McCrae and Terracciano (2005) found that Europeans and Americans were generally more extravert than Asians and Africans.
Lykaios (2007) rates countries for tension (vs. relaxation) and cosmopolitanism (vs. provincialism).
Japan and the Eastern European countries are high in tension, while South-East Asia nations and Scandinavian countries are relaxed. South American and East Asian nations (excluding Japan) are provincial, with European nations being more cosmopolitan (English and German speaking nations are extremely cosmopolitan).
Schmitt, et al. (2007) found that people from the geographic regions of South America and East Asia were significantly different in openness from those inhabiting other world regions.
See also Inglehart (2002) and agnostic (2006).

Populations

"In 1950, whites were 28 percent of world population and Africans 9 percent, a ratio of three-to-one. In 2060, the ratio will remain the same. But the colors will be reversed. People of African ancestry will be 25 percent of the world's population. People of European descent will have fallen to 9.8 percent" (Buchanan (2008)).

Sex

Orientals are the least sexually active and least fertile. Blacks the most sexually active and most fertile. Whites are intermediate. See Rushton (2000).

Science

Murray (2003) found 97 per cent of major figures in science between 800 BC and 1950 AD were white. Murray also lists the 170 most important technological breakthroughs during the same period; all but nine occurred in the West. East Asians make good engineers and have made a large number of useful inventions, but have made few original contributions to mathematics or science (Hart 2007), have made few technological breakthroughs, had few notable figures and have won very few Nobel prizes (Jobling 2008). From around 600AD until 1300AD China was the most advanced nation in the world, but that period was atypical (Hart 2007).
‘Throughout their history the Chinese have been very inventive when it comes to practical solutions to particular problems but did not develop theories from practical solutions that offered general explanations of the world. In this sense, China never developed anything that could be called science.’
‘No Asian society has achieved much success in fundamental scientific discovery or technological innovation that goes beyond the adaptation of what has been invented or discovered elsewhere. Nor, despite the large populations of Asians living in advanced European societies, can we find front-rank scientists in proportion to their numbers. In the social sciences their contributions are practically invisible.’
(Henderson 2009)

Sport

American football. Polynesians are the most ‘overrepresented minority’. Although blacks comprise only 13% of the population of the United States, they account for 65% of the players in the National Football League. Blacks are typically running backs, seldom quarterbacks. Blacks dominate positions that require quick reaction, while whites dominate positions from which actions are initiated, such as quarterback and pitcher.

Baseball. Blacks are overrepresented in baseball, but particularly so in the outfield, where a premium is placed on fast starts, speed and power hitting.

Basketball. Requires fast reflexes and sudden exertion, blacks excel. Although blacks comprise only 13% of the population of the United States, they account for over 75% of professional basketball players.

Gymnastics. Asians excel because they are more flexible and have the quickest reaction time.

Hurdling. Requires fast reflexes and sudden exertion, blacks excel.

Ice skating. Asians excel because they are more flexible and have the quickest reaction time.

Jumping. West Africans excel due to their higher percentage of ‘fast-twitch’ muscle tissue.

Running: Sprints. West Africans excel due to their higher percentage of fast-twitch fibres.

Running: Middle-distance. Kenyans dominate long distance running. It turns out that the Kenyan runners all come from one tribe, the Kalenjin (who make up only 10 percent of Kenya's population). The average Kalenjin runner is 1.5 standard deviations beyond that of the rest of the world: that is an enormous difference.

Running: Marathons. Kenyans excel, as above.

Sumo wrestling. Samoan sumo wrestlers excel as they are larger and quicker than those from Japan.

Swimming. Whites are best at swimming. Compared to whites, blacks have heavier bone density and smaller chest cavities, whilst Asians have less upper body strength.

Table tennis. Asians excel because they are more flexible and have the quickest reaction time.

The Bell Curve

Few books have been subjected to as much criticism as The Bell Curve (Herrnstein and Murray 1994). In the light of subsequent research, how has the book stood the test of time? Have the authors been vindicated, or do the critics have a point?